Cryptocurrencies for Dummies & Friends | Getting Started

Hello friends, I’ve been meaning to put this together to help you understand what my fuss about Bitcoin and making money with cryptocurrencies is all about. Since it seems like many of you think I’m speaking a foreign language when I’m talking about it or sharing articles related to altcoin news. I don’t think you all are dummies, we’re all just interested in our own things so I don’t blame you for not being aware of what’s going on with cryptos.

So what is this Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, that was developed to be a decentralized form of digital currency to be used between peer-to-peer transactions using blockchain technology as a sort of ledger to verify transactions. I’m probably not the greatest at explaining it, but there is a lot of resources out there if you want more information, I’ll try to cover and link to what I can for you to get more info. Here’s a great video by WeUseCoins.com that does a great job explaining Bitcoin.

With a limited amount of Bitcoin out there, I like to describe Bitcoin as similar to Gold. Sort of like a digital gold because it is also minable, except by solving complex math problems instead of actually digging. I’ll try to go over mining later on because for most people it’s not feasible for most people to get into as it takes a lot of power in order to make it worth your while. Another reason that I like to compare it to Gold, is because it’s also tradeable like Gold is at the stock market and its price fluctuates with the market. Cryptocurrency markets never close, however, unlike the stock market that is only open 5 business days a week from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. EST (in the US).

There’s been a lot of buzz about this coin lately, regarding its use, value, and a pretty major update coming August 1st that should help improve transaction processing speeds and hopefully lower fees. Before the cost of BTC has exploded over the past couple years, transaction fees weren’t that bad, but they were never adjusted with the market value which increased what the miners are paid for each transaction which is great for the miners but not so great for us common users. It should be a great update for Bitcoin but the price will become even more volatile and may fluctuate quite a bit in a downward trend until things start to settle.

Hundreds of Cryptocurrencies Called Altcoins

That’s right, Bitcoin isn’t the only one, it’s just the first one to become popular utilizing blockchain technology, And a lot of other altcoins are based on the value of Bitcoin when it comes to trading. With more and more being created, it is very wise to do your own due diligence into figuring out if a coin is worth it before blowing your money on a penny stock sort of scam. I’m relating it to penny stocks because there are many worthless coins that seem to be used for pump and dumps where you don’t want to be the one ending up holding the bag when no more buyers are around. So be careful what you buy or get into and feel free to ask me what I think about one if you want to know what I think about it. A few of the top major altcoins similar to Bitcoin are; Etherium, Litecoin, Ripple, Dash, Monero, & Siacoin, just to name a few. Each of which has their own special purposes that are worth looking into before investing or purchasing any of their coins.

Coinbase is probably my favorite way to buy and sell BTC, ETH or LTC since it is linked to my bank account and also accepts credit/debit cards (for faster transactions with a slightly higher fee). It doesn’t cost anything to create an account and if you use this link (http://bit.ly/thanksJeffy) to sign up, you will receive an extra $10 worth of Bitcoin after you buy or sell $100 worth of cryptocurrency. My account is hooked up to a Crypto Debit Card that allows me to withdraw cash and make purchases using the going exchange rate at the time of purchase. It’s also possible to trade those major coins that Coinbase supports on their platform to an extent, but there are other exchanges that I prefer to use when it comes to trading if I’m not just holding one of them.

Take your time to set up and secure your account, these digital wallets that they provide are your responsibility for safe keeping. Remember how I said these currencies were decentralized? Well, that means that you are now your bank and your digital wallet addresses are your account numbers that you wouldn’t want anyone else to having access to it other than you. Not to mention a recent hack of a Coinbase account that resulted in the loss of over $8k worth of Bitcoin in 15 minutes after his a fraudulent text that appeared to be from Verizon hacked into his account and stole their Bitcoin. Check out this Medium story for more details on how it all went down. This simply could have been avoided had they set up Two Factor Authentication and stored larger amounts of coin in a vault (a more secure version of a wallet) that they allow you to create and store your coins long term.

Using Bitcoin to Buy other Cryptocurrencies

If you think you can just buy an altcoin like Ripple or some other that you may be interested in with cash, you better do some more research. Since you are dealing with digital currency and cryptocurrencies, you usually have to buy them with Bitcoin. Sometimes you can buy an altcoin using Litecoin or Ethereum, but that all depends on the exchange you’re using and what coins support being purchased with them.

If you use my links above for Coinbase, you should start to understand that Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and most recently added Bitcoin Cash are supported on their platform, are also some of the most popular cryptos compared to Bitcoin. Once you buy into some of them here, you are ready to HODL and/or trade smaller altcoins on another exchange.

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Coming up next: Bitcoin Trading & Investments

Please feel to reach out or leave a comment if you have any questions. I’m putting together a post about some different exchanges you can use to use your Bitcoin to trade smaller altcoins as well as a couple other investment opportunities in the crypto space. Looking forward to helping you all through this journey and wish you all the best of luck.